The present disclosure relates to radio frequency (RF) circuits, and in particular to gain control circuitry for use in RF circuits.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Two popular wireless standards, Wi-Fi™ and Bluetooth™, are common among portable communication devices. Wireless standards are typically implemented on a chip by chip basis. For example, a system-on-chip (SOC) solution might be developed to process Wi-Fi™ radio frequency (RF) signals which are based on the IEEE 802.11 standard (also referred to as WLAN for Wireless Local Area Network). A separate and different SOC chip solution would be provided to process Bluetooth™ RF signals which are based on a proprietary open standard developed by Ericsson.
The demand for Wi-Fi™ and Bluetooth™ technologies to be provided in the same device is on the rise, as the desire for communication between users and devices increases. On the other hand, the demand for increased functionality, including support for multiple wireless standards, in smart phones, computer tablets, and other such portable communication devices requires increasing levels of on-chip integration to reduce component counts in order to maintain acceptable device “footprint” sizes and reduce overall power consumption.